Manufacturing To Gardening

Today, I spoke to a massive audience of school principals. Hundreds of them, who were directly touching hundreds of thousands of lives. I spoke about five reasons why small is beautiful. Primarily, small is beautiful because small is connected and a relational web allows for inner transformation to emerge.

Everyone gobbled up the message, and were keen to take things to the next level. But I warned about that, too: “The challenge with cultivating compassion is that it can’t be manufactured, and today’s schools have become factories. Compassion requires gardening. If you’re asking questions about curriculum and scale, things won’t go too far. But if you are looking to support your teachers in growing some flowers on the side, or if you’re looking to create terrace garden with some new rules of engagement, something interesting could emerge.”

Parag, Sachi, Smita-ben and I went together, and all of us unequivocally were in awe at the resonance. As we drove to our next meeting, we all just felt, “Well, if we just keep at this, it could just create a tidal wave of change for the next generation.” With many schools now, we have initiated some experiments to see how we can keep at it. Very exciting.  

<< Previous | Posted Jan 18, 2017 | Next >>